This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Electron microscopes are used wherever particularly small details need to be imaged. But from a strictly physical point of view, every electron in a conventional electron microscope represents a missed opportunity: If all you do is count electrons, any additional quantum information they carry remains unused.
A team at TU Wien, together with teams from the University of Vienna, JKU Linz and the University of Innsbruck, has now developed a way to make use of the quantum information carried by electrons in an electron microscope: The electron beam is coupled to a quantum computer, opening up entirely new possibilities for working with the quantum information of the electrons. This is particularly important for sensitive samples that cannot be bombarded with arbitrarily large numbers of electrons. The quantum-computer electron microscope is now being built at TU Wien.
The paper has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters and is currently available on the arXiv preprint server. The resolution that can be achieved with modern electron microscopes is remarkable. "Today, we can image tiny details on the atomic scale," says Philipp Haslinger from the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics at TU Wien.
"However, this requires a large number of electrons. And not every sample can be exposed to so many electrons without being damaged. This is often a problem, particularly when imaging biological samples such as individual proteins." If, however, more information can be extracted from each individual electron than before, a smaller number of electrons is sufficient.
The team has now found a method to achieve precisely this: "Our idea is to combine the electrons with a quantum computer. We let them interact with ions that are held in place along the path of the electron beam," explains Elias Pescoller, a doctoral student at the Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics at TU Wien and first author of the paper. "This can, for example, create quantum entanglement between the electron and the quantum computer.
The electron and the ion then share a joint quantum state." The ion in the quantum computer now carries information about the electron—and shortly afterward, the next electron passes by and is likewise entangled with the quantum computer. "If we perform very specific quantum-computing operations each time, we can optimally combine the information from several electrons so that we obtain a signal of maximum strength even though we use only a relatively small number of electrons," says Dennis Rätzel from the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics at TU Wien. The algorithms that make this possible were developed in collaboration with Johannes Kofler's team at JKU Linz.
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